Summary of Excreted and Waterborne Viruses

Abstract

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Environmental and spatial determinants of enteric pathogen infection in rural Lao People’s Democratic Republic: A cross-sectional study

“…Many enteric bacteria, protozoa, and some STH can be transmitted by animal feces [26]. Zoonotic transmission of enteric viruses are rare, with the exception of rotavirus and Hepatitis E [26,57]. Consistent with these pathways, we found that animal ownership was associated with higher odds of protozoal infection, and trended towards higher odds of bacterial and STH infection and lower odds of viral infection.…”

“…At the taxa-level, we observed higher odds of infection among CU5 compared to other age groups only for protozoa, an association driven largely by Giardia, which is one of the first enteric pathogens to infect children [56], and the most common infection in our study population. We found no significant difference in odds of infection across age groups for half of the 18 pathogens in our species-specific analysis, including rotavirus, which is the leading cause of acute gastroenteritis in infants and young children in developing countries [57], the leading cause of death due to diarrhea among children <5 [58], and is typically considered a childhood illness [59]. One explanation for these associations is that intra-household transmission may be a key transmission pathway for enteropathogens.…”

“…Compared to bacteria and protozoa, viruses have a lower infectious dose and a higher rate of shedding, sometimes long after resolution of symptoms. As a result, viral pathogens spread easily from person to person and via fomites [57,60,61]. Evidence suggests that improvements in sanitation alone are not sufficient to prevent enteric virus transmission [62], especially rotavirus which is highly infectious and extremely persistent in the environment [63].…”

Concentration methods for the quantification of coronavirus and other potentially pandemic enveloped virus from wastewater

“…Wastewater is a complex matrix that comprises a large variety of pathogenic and commensal viruses and provides important information about virus circulation, the introduction of emergent viruses and how they are transmitted among the population [ 1 ]. Waterborne viruses are generally nonenveloped and excreted in high numbers by infected individuals with or without disease, and in some cases long after the resolution of symptoms [ 2 ]. The study of excreted viruses is a very useful tool known as wastewater-based epidemiology, which has the potential to act as a complementary approach for current infectious disease surveillance systems and an early warning system for disease outbreaks [ 3 ].…”

“…After conducting an extensive revision on the most commonly used methods for concentrating viruses from wastewater samples in the last 2 years, Bofill-Mas and Rusiñol described that viral concentration methods had been mostly focused on combinations of flocculation/precipitation strategies [ 25 ]. Traditionally, viral environmental surveillance has considered principally RNA enteric viruses and also DNA viruses abundantly excreted in faeces, urine or skin desquamation as adenoviruses, polyomaviruses and papillomaviruses, which are all nonenveloped virus [ 2 ]. In fact, in 2015, Wigginton et al.…”